Currently, there is a significant need for force measurements in biological and biomedical sciences. Namely, biological systems respond to forces and stresses such that the responses (both physical and biochemical) can be used to determine the health of a patient. For example, blood clots serve to stem the flow of blood in a wound, and the clotting success relies on the mechanical integrity of protein filaments called fibrin fibers. Similarly, the tissues that line the blood vessels and the lung also respond to stress. These cells are under constant cyclic stress due to the pumping of blood and due to respiration, respectively. In the case of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels, the response of these cell linings determine the release of biochemical agents to retard inflammation. In the case of the epithelial cells that line the lung, the stress response regulates the amount of mucus that coats the lung. With the vast set of biochemical pathways that need to be elucidated and complex mechanisms that need to be explored, the biological sciences have developed high throughput screening where hundreds to millions of experiments can be performed in parallel. However, at this time, there is no equivalent high throughput assay that applies force and measures the biological response to the stress.
Other types of high throughput experiments that can be conducted include magnetic experiments where molecules are separated based on permeability, electrochemical experiments where conductivity of an assay is measured by applying a potential difference and measuring the corresponding current, electrophoresis where molecules in an assay are differentiated based on charge, dielectrophoresis where molecules in an assay are differentiated based on polarizability, frequency dependent electric or magnetic experiments where molecules are differentiated based on frequency response under an applied time varying electric or magnetic field, and combinations of any of these types of experiments.
Accordingly, there exists a need for methods and systems for multiforce high throughput screening methods.